Wednesday, December 23, 2009

It's Holiday Shopping Time, While the Peace of the Graveyard Marches On

And if it makes you uncomfortable to read this while you would prefer to think about your last-minute Christmas shopping, that's fine, as long as your discomfort leads you to action.

by Jane Guskin, Huffington Post
December 21, 2009

In Colombia there is an expression: la paz del cementerio - the peace of the graveyard.

This is the kind of peace that powerful forces enjoy when everyone who resists them is dead and buried.

Colombia's government and its military and paramilitary forces have spent decades working diligently for this kind of peace. The country is so intent on achieving it that its even dispensed with the graveyard. According to Senator Gloria Inés Ramírez, more than half a million people have been forcibly disappeared in Colombia in the past 33 years.... Of the cases investigated so far, fewer than 2,500 bodies have been located, mostly in mass graves.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-guskin/emla-paz-del-cementerioem_b_399189.html

No comments: